


Memoirs

by vaulthunter



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Anders Manifesto, Anders death, F/M, Post-Game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-22 12:44:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20874413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaulthunter/pseuds/vaulthunter
Summary: Hawke finally reads Anders's manifesto, but it's too late.





	Memoirs

**Author's Note:**

> I did art for this! You may view it here: https://shoutyart.tumblr.com/post/187935464801/still-etched-into-those-papers-were-the-ghosts-of

Still etched into those papers were the ghosts of memories. In the harsh lines and crumples from the papers being opened and scrunched a hundred times over with new thoughts, new ideas, hastily scrawled ideas in thin, messy handwriting. Ink droplets stained light grey into the off-yellow of the old parchment. He never did remember to dab his quill before applying it to paper.**  
**

Anders didn’t remember to do a lot of things. 

He didn’t remember to eat, for one. Marian had to make it a priority to stock him up on groceries every week and ensure he was actually using them. Apples gone rotten and bread gone moldy implied that despite her best efforts, he still forgot, sometimes. There was always work to do, he’d said. If it wasn’t helping mages escape the Circle, it was helping a refugee give birth or an old Darktown man come down with the cholera. Anders didn’t remember to brush and maintain his hair, either, and he’d complain when strands of honey-blond tresses fell over his eyes when he was working. Long, slender fingers would rake through it incessantly, tying what he could manage into the messiest of tails at the back of his head. The band would always fall out within the hour. Marian took to keeping spares around her wrist for him. 

Anders forgot to laugh, but he loved a good joke, even if it was on him.

Something that would crack open the walls of his chest and let the wind tickle his heart just enough to let him know it was still there. Inscribed into those old, dusty papers were his favorite jokes. One didn’t have to peel back many of them to find words pertaining to mage rights replaced with crude, vulgar substitutes in bold, thin handwriting that differed greatly from his own penmanship. He used to pretend he was mad at Marian for not taking his manifesto seriously, but few things could escape her notice, least of all the molecular moments in which Anders could be just Anders, just hers, when he’d turn and disguise a chuckle with a breath of irritation. 

Long, bruised fingers reached down to brush against the stack of papers that felt so ancient they could crumble under her touch. She’d never intended on reading them, truly. Never took the time to hear Anders’s arguments, read the heat of passion that went into every hastily-written sentence. She’d salvaged a lot of the papers she’d tossed. A couple behind the hearth, a few tucked into the cushion of the library’s couch, some under the mattress. They were strewn all throughout the estate. Anger, passion, these things would grab Anders often, but he was forgetful. He tried to put his thoughts to parchment so that he wouldn’t forget.

Injustices against the mages were not the only memories etched into these papers. 

Anders’s manifesto spoke of hate and abuse. It spoke of how useless the Chantry was, how vile its teachings were, how oppressive the templars were. It spoke of a fat tabby cat that seemed like a far-away dream come true. It spoke of a single gold earring left behind in some abandoned lockbox in Amaranthine. It spoke of a dwarven Warden being the first to stand up for him in his entire life, and of a wronged Dalish elf spitting venom between lips scorned. Anders’s manifesto told stories of an older woman from his childhood whose face he’d forgotten and a fiery-spirited elvhen necromancer from the Circle whose face he could never forget. 

It told stories of Marian Hawke. Marian Hawke’s raven-black hair falling jagged like swords over her brows, piercing blue eyes like sharpened jewels, thin fingers gentle on his skin in ways he had never known. Marian Hawke’s unparalleled support and love for him. He couldn’t always understand why she felt for him the way that she did, but she anchored him, she allowed him these final years with her, a last ditch chance to be just Anders again. To laugh again. Anders’s manifesto bared thoughts that would be forgotten when he woke in the morning, evidence that he knew what dark path he was walking down, but that he hoped he would not forget the light was just behind him up for grabs if he only turned and took it. 

Anders didn’t take it.

No, Marian didn’t read his manifesto when he was still here. Anders didn’t really want her to, either, or at least didn’t seem to mind her lack of interest. She wished now that she would have read it. That she would have listened to the signs and not followed him so blindly so that she might have had a chance at saving him. Held him tighter during the sleepless nights, cut his hair just a bit shorter so that it wouldn’t bother him so much, brushed out his pauldrons so that he didn’t look like so much of an enraged bird struck by a fireball. He’d loved that analogy. He’d laughed at it.

Her fingers looked like that of a malnourished ghost as she took the stack of papers in her hand, touch as light as a feather. Eyes like turquoise gemstones found the first words to the first page of all Anders had left behind:

_In dedication to my dearest Hawke,_

_I should think the feather pauldrons would suit you better than I._


End file.
